VERA HUTSON

FOSTERING HOPE

One girl, age 8, spoke only gibberish and didn’t know how to use a fork. One child was hungry all the time and physically guarded her food. Two biological sisters had previously been in 13 foster homes.

For 24 years, Vera Hutson has been a foster mother to 10 of the city’s most challenged children.

“At age 15, I knew I would raise other people’s kids,” says Hutson, 60, a retired pre-sentence writer – compiling a felony offender’s history and circumstances into one report – for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. “I grew up in a stable, loving home, and I wanted to provide a place where the children would be fed, clothed and not beaten or raped.”

The children come from distressed families of parents with mental illness, drug abuse problems and/or cognitive disabilities. One mother had 16 children by the time she was 31, all given up for adoption.

The youngsters have brought a host of challenges into Hutson’s tidy North Side home filled with crocheted afghans and family photos on Milwaukee’s North Side: crack baby symptoms, violent tempers, promiscuity, pathological lying. To steady them until they reach adulthood, Hutson provides shelter, love, clear boundaries and, when necessary, discipline. “It doesn’t matter what they throw back at her, she hangs in there,” says Patricia Parker, family friend and pastor of the Craig Memorial Chapel C.M.E. Church.

Most of the 10 children Hutson has fostered – five of whom she adopted – have come to her through word of mouth even though she is a licensed foster parent. Some were siblings, including two of the three with her now; the third is her great-niece.

The first boy she took in, an 8-year-old, had been severely neglected and abused. He had selective mutism and did not start school until age 7. “He was put in a class for the mentally retarded, but I could tell he wasn’t,” Hutson recalls. She fought to have him mainstreamed, and by his teenage years, he was excelling in a pre-college program for low-income students at UW-Madison. He died of acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 16, a loss Hutson still mourns.

Hutson has also provided her foster children with opportunities: music lessons, camp, clubs and travel. “I made sure everyone went on a plane,” Hutson says. “I want them to know there is life outside of Milwaukee.”

Not all of Hutson’s charges have gone on to easy lives; some have been arrested or had adolescent pregnancies. But as adults, most are self-supporting. One is a long-distance truck driver, another a health aide, another a nursing student.

Parker says Hutson doesn’t brag — she simply sees a need and steps in.

Hutson says, “I don’t talk about it, I just do it.”